Zyn and Progressive House leads and other production tips?

[Minkovsky]

Hi all,

I've been working on Exomorph (current version as of writing: Exomorph v4). Slating it as a progressive house track. I'm fairly happy with the melody and overall composition, but there's just something missing. Compare with Otto Knows's remix of Starlight which was my direct inspiration.

The chorus lead just sounds flat. I've tried making it interesting, but somehow it's just not working very well. It's the mostly standard Zyn formula for a "Power" EDM-type lead with some effects on top of it. What can I do to make it sound less like someone taking a cat and running it through a moog and more like something with decent production value?

I also want to add some bass to the chorus. Right now it's mostly "fine", but there just isn't any good rhythmic pumping bass you'd expect from an EDM track. I tried playing around with TripleOsc but again with not much success (see: Exomorph v3).

Making bass duck out of the way of kicks is also a pain in LMMS, I've tried the peak-controller-bound-to-fader method but it's not all that great either. I'll keep experimenting.

Aside from that, what other ideas can you give me to make this sound actually nice?

Thanks!

[musikbear]

First
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The first thing i thought, was 'not sure acid-leads belong in progressive house'. On the other hand your track starts as a good acid-track :p
But for prog-house, i would find a different sound, not acid.
I like your mono-pluck, and the melody is ok, perhaps you could try some more variation?
Maybe some clean flute-thing, could also work, and the end is not very interesting, but very long, so some 'condensing' to a shorter track, would imo also be good.

[Gps]

If I compare you’re track with the one you linked, I think the break needs to be more different.

And a bit more variation, like musicbear already suggested.

[Minkovsky]

Thanks for the forum welcome, MusikBear!

First
The first thing i thought, was 'not sure acid-leads belong in progressive house'. On the other hand your track starts as a good acid-track :p

Thanks, might rework that intro but for now it sounds nice.

Maybe some clean flute-thing, could also work

Yeah, was thinking about that too. Definitely need to add some more variation to the melody, but at the same time I'm also thinking of how to get some more interesting sounds out of Zyn - so far it's got banks and banks full of pads, but not a lot of things you hear in music elsewhere. Right now most videos I've seen on somewhat serious EDM production with LMMS just bail out and use Sylenth - it's probably really good, but I know Zyn can do that stuff too, I just can't find a way to get to that sound. This is also why I opened #2446 on GitHub, and when I have some more time, I'll try to work on that now that Tunefish is indeed open-source.

and the end is not very interesting, but very long, so some 'condensing' to a shorter track, would imo also be good.

That I can do. To be honest, the end is not really meant to be interesting, it's either to let you breathe a bit from the energy of the last chorus, or for another track to be mixed in.

[st3aLth]

Try download free various VSTi synths and see how there leads are configured. Then the same twist in ZynAddSubfx

[farawayinspace]

Not really my type of music (though I like the acid bass). I get kinda bored with the hi-hats and claps: maybe introduce some variation by using a randomizing LFO on a medium-resonsant filter cut-off, and slightly LFO the amplitude.